1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a heat exchanger provided with a structure with which a seal material for filling the gap between the heat exchanger and the case in which the heat exchanger is housed is mounted at the heat exchanger for purposes such as preventing air from bypassing the heat exchanger via the gap.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a cooling unit constituting a portion of an air conditioning system, the gap formed between the inner wall of the case and the evaporator must be sealed off in order to, for instance, prevent air from bypassing the air conditioning system via the gap between the evaporator and the case so that the air conditioning system can perform to its full air conditioning capacity.
For this purpose, a structure whereby a foam body (the seal material as referred to in this application, which will also be referred to as such hereafter) is mounted at a heat exchanger along almost the entire circumference of the heat exchanger except for the air passage portion and also covering the two surfaces of the tanks at the air passage side, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. S 55-51492, has already been developed.
In addition, in recent years, structures that facilitate the dismantling of automobiles into individual automotive parts so that they can be recycled as resources when automobiles are scrapped have been more readily adopted. This trend has been evident in the case of air conditioning systems mounted in automobiles, as well, and it has become increasingly desirable to facilitate the sorting of the heat exchanger parts according to their constituent materials, e.g., aluminum parts and parts constituted of materials other than aluminum, such as foam.
In the structure disclosed in the publication described above for mounting a foam body to a heat exchanger, since an integrated foam body is mounted at the heat exchanger, covering the entirety of the heat exchanger except for its air passage portion, it is difficult to remove the foam body, and this complicates the sorting of the heat exchanger parts according to constituent materials.
Because of this, in order to minimize waste produced at the time of scrapping, a structure in which a band-like elastic seal material (the seal material as referred to in this application, and referred to as such hereafter) is mounted by being wound around the external circumferential portion of a laminated heat exchanger, at the sides relative to the direction of the airflow, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. H 4-73772, has been developed in recent years.
However, if a band-like seal material is simply mounted at a laminated heat exchanger, wound around the external circumferential portion at the sides relative to the direction of the airflow, the seal material becomes easily misaligned when the laminated heat exchanger is mounted in a case, thereby creating a new problem, i.e., the need for preventing such misalignment.
Thus, in order to prevent such misalignment of the seal material, in the heat exchanger disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. H 4-73772, an elastic seal material is adhered to the external circumferential portion of the heat exchanger at the sides relative to the direction of the airflow.
However, it is extremely time consuming to peel off the elastic seal material adhering to the external circumferential portion of the heat exchanger, and since this results in the work process for sorting the heat exchanger parts according to their constituent materials more difficult, the recycling and re-utilization of manufacturing materials being may sometimes be skipped due to the difficulty of the sorting work and the expenses required for the sorting work in the worst case.